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Both are appropriate, IMO. Stolen from a thread that stole it from ponygoons:

Anyway, notes:

The initial interview (in a studio with prepared questions) is only about 45 minutes. This is followed by a second one in front of the live audience.

- Culture at Studio B is relaxed and casual (duh)

- There's creative input at all levels and freedom to add or tweak things as it progresses through production; he restates that Hasbro is generally quite lax

- Hasbro doesn't sit in on the storywriting round-tables, but they do receive and approve story ideas and return comments/input (which the studio sometimes genuinely thinks is an improvement)

- Reading between the lines, Pucca is really his only prior directing experience, and his getting the FiM gig was a pretty lucky break for a new up-and-coming director who doesn't really know what he's doing yet

- Jayson started out as a classical animator, has worked in lots of different disciplines (obviously); directing is "like drawing with boxing gloves on"

- Personal favorite episode (he previously said Sonic Rainboom): each new one that comes out is his new favorite, but he goes on at length about A Friend In Deed. The felt thing was his own idea, like "We don't usually do this kind of thing, but maybe just this one time"; he had to get Hasbro's okay on it. He was originally going to do it really crudely, but got carried away. He says they "wouldn't just do that arbitrarily", which I take to mean they probably won't do a wacky stylized episode just because.

- The fandom's presence affects him mostly in stuff like how careful he has to be with info he leaks on Twitter and the like. He's very careful about spoilers (a common running theme with him), and for him it's all because of the artistic integrity he applies to the show's linear presentation.

- They haven't had to deviate very much at all from what Lauren originally put together in the show bible; evolution has been organic and not in conflict (they don't ever go back and consult it anymore, they just "know" the characters)

- He doesn't have his own OC pony. But someone at BroNYCon in September gave him a custom sculpted pony of him, and he keeps it in his office :3:

- He was involved early enough to be part of the VA casting.

- One of Andrea Libman's most impressive abilities is her speed; they don't have to cut her lines together or anything

- He doesn't really have a good answer on comparing the ponies to their G1/G3 counterparts; as I assumed from my earlier talk with him, he just isn't that familiar with oldpony.

- "The point of any series is to grow the characters"-- he's not spoiling anything, but clearly character development and evolution is one of the biggest things in his mind. "We try to remember the past, like 'Oh yeah, now she can do this'" (i.e. RD reading Daring Do)

- He's always coming up with his own ideas for future pitches-- no specifics right now

- Why do people keep asking this "What would you like to see the fandom do" question? He still hasn't come up with a pat answer. "Just keep being awesome fans! And, uh, be aware of copyright laws! :haw:"

- The phenomenon "feels unprecedented" to him. He's inspired by the variety of different kinds of people in the fandom, and enjoys thinking it's an expression of the show's theme of friendship and acceptance. "I couldn't be more proud. Love ya!"

(Intermission, followed by a new set of questions from fans in the audience at the con)

- His dad used to draw the Road Runner when he was a kid, and he was fascinated by that-- that plus a Disney filmstrip viewer thing were formative experiences in his animation career

- Shows he's a fan of: classic WB, Popeye, b/w Mickey Mouse. Hey, he watched MLP as a kid, "it was better than the news". Ren & Stimpy, Simpsons, Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, Disney Afternoon shows. Nowadays, he doesn't really have time to keep up with what's current. (My own editorializing: seems like he isn't keeping tabs on what the "state of the art" is, for comparative purposes; he might not even have a sense for just how far above the bar FiM is in many ways.)

- Genre stuff (like Daring Do) just follows from the situation; they do whatever's necessary to tell the story well.

- Lauren is not a part of Season 3 (except in spirit)

- He rewatched the premiere eps recently and was all like "Whoah... we've really improved since then"

- In writing, the story generally comes first, and the moral is developed over the course of the writing (though in some cases, like Read It And Weep, it's the reverse). Very ad-hoc. Also, Jayson isn't very privy to the writers and their development process, which is something he's mentioned before.

- Trying to articulate the "secret sauce"; Hasbro's thought when coming up with Hub shows was to appeal to adults who grew up with 80s properties (for nostalgia) and to their kids as well. His insight into Hasbro's early-on development with Lauren is pretty speculative; to him it just feels like something that "just happened", and couldn't be reproduced intentionally. He really feels like this is a very valuable thing for the network/Hasbro and that any company in their shoes would be falling all over themselves to try to reproduce this phenomenon and capitalize on it.

- The community interaction/DA comments and so on just seemed natural-- nobody ever told him and his team that nobody was "supposed" to communicate openly with fans, so they just sort of did

- He's bought some of the toys (for his daughter for Xmas); Hasbro has sent them some swag ("they're a very good client")

- Artists in the studio have pony toys all over the place, including some monster-sculpture G1 ponies that have been reassembled in weird ways. There's fan-art up on the walls ( :awesomedash: )

- Songs aren't free; adding a song to an episode is a cost-benefit decision, planned carefully in advance. They're considered the highlights of the show. (He's had Winter Wrap Up stuck in his head for months on end, even prior to airing)

- Screwloose is his new favorite BG pony (thanks to a custom someone gave him); he's tentatively throwing down for Pinkie as his favorite main-cast pony. Pinkie being a fourth-wall breaker was straight out of Lauren's guidance.

- He watched G1 when he was a kid, but he didn't retain any of it really. "That pink pony show I used to bide my time with before school." He does remember an episode where a pony wished for it to stop raining, and then a drought happened.

- He thinks the show could potentially sustain a movie, and thinks it would be really cool (especially if they were to go with him as the director--not a foregone conclusion, TV being a different thing)

- Production timeline: 9 months to finish the first episode (started Nov. 2009). 5-7 episodes going at any given time, dividing resources.

- Really challenging scenes: in SFS, the final reveal of the dresses kinda fought them, and Lauren had to fly in and help work on storyboards and develop a sequence that worked (it wasn't quite how she originally conceived it). Also the Elements transformation in the premiere was tricky, especially since they were still just figuring out the tech.

- All the backgrounds are "painted" in Flash; Jeff Manson(?) is the BG painter who sets up the color keys and makes Flash sing and dance. Zoomable backgrounds make a huge difference in flexibility of staging. Flash is temperamental (especially with large files); one of the big technical challenges is when Flash can't cope with huge crowd shots and the like.

- All the animation is hand-done--no ActionScript, just tweening. Premade animation includes the run cycle, walk cycle, trot cycle, in each of 8 angles (plus Pinkie's bounce). Also a few things like eye blinks and hair bounces. But all the rest is custom.

- Location layouts are generally known in a rough sense, but it's loose--i.e. there isn't some canonical map of towns or interior floorplans. They've futzed a bit with trying to get things like windows to line up between Twilight's loft and the tree's exterior, but they don't focus too hard on it, especially when it would get limiting. "It's flexible."

- Fan community's effect on his day-to-day: he does follow it and tries to keep up with what the daily topics of discussion are, but he doesn't let it influence the show too much. He tries to be tight-lipped about things he lets the fans know, but this seems to come down to protecting against spoilers rather than much in the way of trade secrets or the like.

- Journalists ask him "what about this show is attracting bronies?" all the time; I guess we're not the only ones hungering to interview him.

- He's intrigued by the "girls watching guys' TV is okay, the reverse is 'weird'" phenomenon, and he's excited to see what social effects it's having. He asks the fans to "Keep doing what you're doing".

- He was amused by 4chan's creating a /mlp section

- He's still blown away by the idea of so many people hanging on his every word and lining up for his autograph

- "Keep being magical! :haw: "

"Holy shit, I ask you to stop being autistic and you debate what autistic is." - spasm

If the mane 6 were animated humans and the show were simply called My Magic Friendship or some silly thing, would you care? Would you watch it?

Probably yeah. But then I watched and enjoyed Lucky Star and Azumanga Daioh, so I'm not exactly the ideal picture of macho masculine sensibility.

That said, echoing what Evel said about them being ponies adding a bit of amusement to it. To be perfectly honest what really hooked me into the fandom wasn't the show by itself, but rather the show being good plus the creators being awesome at interacting with fans, and Lauren Faust's brilliant politeness judo when dealing with trolls. That and the ridiculous emphasis on art and music and -making-, not just passive consumption. The fandom really celebrates people creating things.

-O

I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those Thukkers, that way I wouldn't have to have any goddamn stupid useless conversations with anybody.
Failing the Voight-Kampff test, one tortoise at a time.

One of the things that appealed to me was the decently constructed background with the fantasy and mythical elements. If the show still had that even with human characters it would have a good chance of attracting my attention. Ponies help it stand appart from other shows, though. Also, cute.

Originally Posted by Ophichius

The fandom really celebrates people creating things.

This. I can't imagine the show and its fanbase any other way and it is the main reason I've stuck around. If there is one single thing that defines the fandom it's the 'celebration of creativity'.

If the mane 6 were animated humans and the show were simply called My Magic Friendship or some silly thing, would you care? Would you watch it?

It's impossible to say; there's a hook in the fact that they're colorful cartoon ponies, rather than human girls.

Evel's answer is about the most diplomatic answer you'll get. Maybe I'd watch it, but it's hard to say. The absurdity (and easy recognition) of colorful ponies is a big part of the show. Otherwise there's a good chance it would be confused with a magical girl anime.

So this is only tangentially related to ponies, but the new version of the wonderful iTunes DRM stripper is out, which includes support for the iTunes' new 1080p video files. So it will finally be possible to grab and archive clean copies of MLP in 1080p, as opposed to deinterlacing the bugged (and overcompressed) TV broadcasts. It's not Blu-Ray quality, but it's the next best thing.

Though it won't do anything for season 1, whose wacky gamma is a source problem rather than an encode problem.

If the show wasn't about ponies it would just be a generic magic girl anime(at least in my mind, I haven't watched anime besides Dragon Ball Z over 10 years ago).

It actually doesn't bear much relation to magical girl anime, aside from a few nods here and there (S1 elements transformation sequence mostly.)

It would really be closer to a slice of life story than anything else. Though it's a bit heavy on the moralizing to be a straight up SOL. (Actually, thought for another day, I would love to see FiM treated as a straight-up slice of life story.)

-O

I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those Thukkers, that way I wouldn't have to have any goddamn stupid useless conversations with anybody.
Failing the Voight-Kampff test, one tortoise at a time.

For those that don't know the story, there are several tunnels on this campus. This past year the administration decided to auction off panels of the tunnel wall for any organized group to paint a mural. There are about 2 dozen such murals sharing the walls of the tunnel with this one, and the topics are really no more or less special (XKCD, Homestuck, Doctor Who, Fighterjet T-Rex, etc). I don't have a reason to go on campus anymore but the few time I did recently everyones' works were still in good shape and unvandalized.

I don't know if any money was involved in this auction, but it doesn't matter. This is low. On the other, more cynical, side: I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did - pretty much a whole year.

I might get in contact with the campus group who made this and help them repaint.

Now I'm curious - what's your source for this bit of news, Mortalitis? I haven't seen it posted anywhere yet.

For those that don't know the story, there are several tunnels on this campus. This past year the administration decided to auction off panels of the tunnel wall for any organized group to paint a mural. There are about 2 dozen such murals sharing the walls of the tunnel with this one, and the topics are really no more or less special (XKCD, Homestuck, Doctor Who, Fighterjet T-Rex, etc). I don't have a reason to go on campus anymore but the few time I did recently everyones' works were still in good shape and unvandalized.

I don't know if any money was involved in this auction, but it doesn't matter. This is low. On the other, more cynical, side: I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did - pretty much a whole year.

I might get in contact with the campus group who made this and help them repaint.

Now I'm curious - what's your source for this bit of news, Mortalitis? I haven't seen it posted anywhere yet.

was on /mlp/: http://boards.4chan.org/mlp/res/4857796 so the OP might be the one who has just done it. There is not much content other than rage but the picture looks pretty damn legit despite the source being from the most illegitimate place on the internet. Can't stick around much longer as I have class in the morning to see a confirmation or second source.

They could just be white washing over it to discourage further vandalism. That was the entire point when the administration auctioned off the tunnel panels. Hopefully this doesn't cause the policy to be reconsidered. Also, it's comming up on a full year since the first painting so they may wipe tye while tunnel and auction it off again to new groups.

This is what the tunnel looked like at the beginning of the summer. I don't have any better pictures, sorry. A Doctor Who mural is right across from the MLP one.